Apple quietly slips WebRTC audio, video into Safari’s WebKit spec

“WebKit, the browser engine for Safari, is on track to support protocols that enable native video and audio communications in the browser,” Liam Tung reports for ZDNet. “Although Apple hasn’t publicly announced support for WebRTC, it has now approved it as ‘in development’ for WebKit.”

“Today, Google, Mozilla, Opera, and even Microsoft’s new Edge browser support WebRTC,” Tung reports. “But until this week, there’d been little evidence that Apple would join the party, with WebRTC based on a Google-led specification for video and chat services native to the browser.”

“The technology lets developers build peer-to-peer video and chat on the web with JavaScript and HTML5, bypassing the need to install a plugin or application,” Tung reports. “There’s no timeframe for when Apple will implement WebRTC in Safari.”